"American Gangster"

Success is what drives "American Gangster" - the success of bad cops, the success of Frank Lucas (Denzel Washington) the heroin lord, and the significant lack of success on the parts of Richie Roberts (Russell Crowe) and the other good cops. All success and power here is unabashedly bought; Frank enforces his empire though violence and addiction, the bad cops through legal immunity. But Frank and Richie are unlike the other characters - cops and bad guys included - because they manage to hold onto their ethics in a time when being good rarely pays.

Frank is the man of the future: a young black entrepreneur in an age when such things are still considered preposterous. Already, he is an unflinching rebel against the injustice of 1960's racial prejudice. In a fairer world he might just as well have become the CEO of a large energy company. Richie is also something new, though his struggle is not as historically impossible as Frank's: he strives to remake the law in the image of an honest man, and for "honest man" read "himself."

The egotism would be laughable if the character didn't take it so seriously. Watching both men defy the jaded rules of criminal and legal systems alike emphasizes that there are no cops and robbers here, but instead just a throng of variously aligned, amoral thugs and the extreme few who refuse to remain as powerless as their society expects them to be. Frank and Richie are the only two characters who even try to resist destiny. Their successes are all the more poignant because they are built upon one another; when Richie succeeds, Frank falls, and vice versa.

The need to destroy one another is the only reason that their distinct and disparate moral codes matter at all, because they really are the only two moral people in the film. They even serve the same clientele. (When they meet, they clearly recognize one another as equals - watch how, in the questioning room, Washington drops his aloof mien as Crowe becomes more serious and straightforward. This was a scene that I particularly enjoyed.)

Neither man is definitively "right." Right and wrong are not issues here, except for a somewhat disappointing 10 minutes at the end when Frank and Richie work together to arrest every bad cop in the tri-state area. (I like to skip this part in my mind. It comes across as a cheesy attempt to reassure viewers of their preconceived concepts of good and evil. The bad cops are too evil and corrupt to take seriously in this context - why not just call a spade a spade? They're no worse or better than every other character in the movie.)

The great question that dogs viewers through the film is simply why? Why must Richie persist in his obsessive protection of the law? Why won't Frank quit the drug trade and enjoy his millions in safety? Do they care about their "customers" that much? Do they seek rewards - money for Frank and ego fuel for Richie?

Or do they, as I suspect, persevere simply in order to break down the systems which refuse to recognize them as real men?

The film is well made. The final shot and the encounter on the church steps are particularly moving. The plot balances nicely between the two characters, though it is far from symmetrical; Frank is already well-established in what almost seems like a business holding pattern by the time that Richie begins to hunt for the fabled supplier of Blue Magic heroin. This means that while Richie's story builds to the dramatic bust of Frank's operation, Frank's story deals with relatively even everyday stresses, like family, competitors and police bribery. Frank, also, starts out the film as the protege of a previous mobster, and he is in an excellent position to assert himself. On the other hand, we see Richie begin from the bottom with almost nothing going for him. Their stories dovetail in a way which recalls the passing of a baton.

"American Gangsters" is among the best movies I've seen recently. Not just among those I liked - because that would throw it in with "Plan 9 from Outer Space" and "The Forbidden Zone" - but among actual honest-to-God really good movies, like "El Mariachi" and "The Squid and the Whale." See "Gangsters" now - you'll see it again at Oscar time.